Christmas in the Fungeon
by Aurora West
Summary: Taffyta pays a visit to the fungeon to make sure that King Candy isn't alone on Christmas. (oneshot follow-up to Terminal)


Disclaimer: _Wreck-It Ralph_ is the property of the Walt Disney Company.

Author's note: This was my submission for the #MerryXMasRich project on tumblr. It's Christmassy and fluffy in the extreme. It also was meant to serve sort of as a bridge between my fic 'Terminal' and the sequel to 'Terminal' (which remains mostly unwritten). So while I won't say you _have _to read 'Terminal' to understand this, it...probably would help. Anyway, have some King Candy/Taffyta platonic fluff! Merry Christmas, friends!

* * *

The tree was losing _all its needles_.

Taffyta paused, out of breath, on the spiral staircase that led down to the fungeon. No one had told her the needles would _fall off _the tree. Needles hadn't been falling off the one she'd seen in Fix-It Felix's apartment. That one had been beautiful and green and glowing and Taffyta had gasped when she'd seen it and asked, "What's _that_?"

Felix had looked down at the plate he was holding and said, "Best sugar cookies in the whole arcade! They're my old dad's recipe, here, have one!"

But Taffyta had just waved the plate away—why did she need cookies, she lived in _Sugar Rush_, she could have all the cookies she wanted—and pointed. "No. _That_."

Felix's mouth had dropped open. "Oh my land, you too?"

"Huh?"

The handyman was shaking his head. "I knew Turbo did some bad things but if I'd known that none of you kids had _Christmas_…"

"What?" Taffyta had asked. "No, we had Christmas, but we didn't have _those_. Is that a…"

"Not to spoil it for ya, Taffyta, but it's a Christmas tree," Vanellope had spoken up, chomping down on a cookie. "Yeah, it's pretty cool. Kinda like the ones you guys would put up but just not candy."

Taffyta had been so enthralled by the tree, strung with glowing lights and shiny glass ornaments, that she hadn't even bothered to feel guilty about the fact that it was _Vanellope _who had never had Christmas. There was a glittering star at the top and candy canes (courtesy of Vanellope) hanging on its branches. "Ours never looked like this," she whispered.

It was true, the Christmas trees that she'd put up sporadically over the years were just little chocolate-covered pretzel trees with dum-dums for branches. She remembered distinctly the first time she'd seen one—it had been _Sugar Rush's _second Christmas, and she'd gone up to the castle to talk to King Candy about something. He hadn't been in the throne room, so she'd gone hunting for him and found him in the castle library, struggling to stand a dead tree up in one corner. Gumballs and gobstoppers had been scattered on the floor around him and there were bunches of candy necklaces tangled together at his feet. She'd known what Christmas was, but she'd had no idea you were supposed to put up a _dead tree_ to celebrate it. King Candy had acted kind of funny about it, like he was embarrassed to be seen doing something so strange without any help, but Taffyta had been curious and he'd told her it was a tradition.

In hindsight, he'd probably been weird about it since he'd worried she might demand to know where he'd come up with such a crazy idea. He hadn't known her as well then—hadn't known how completely she idolized and adored him and would never in a million years have suspected him of anything remotely bad, and certainly not that he'd actually been a usurper in disguise.

No Christmas tree that anyone had put up in _Sugar Rush_ had ever been remotely as beautiful as Felix's was, though.

"If you want one," Ralph had said, "those new guys down in that _Winter X Games_ place are giving 'em away."

"Oh," Taffyta had said, blushing. Ralph had been really nice to her the past month or so, after three months of…well, not being nice, after _Sugar Rush _had reset. "No, that's okay, I don't really need…" But then she'd trailed off because an idea had suddenly occurred to her. "Actually yeah," she'd said. "Yeah, I think I do want one."

And currently, she was dragging the tree she'd procured down into the bowels of Sugar Rush Castle, watching in horror as it shed needles behind her. Maybe if she went faster it would lose fewer needles? Or maybe it would just lose them faster…

She set her mouth in a determined line, adjusted her hold on the tree's trunk, straightened the bag of ornaments and lights hanging off her shoulder, and kept descending, watching where she was putting her feet and _not _watching her tree go bald.

The fungeon was well lit as always once she got down there, every door being open except the one at the very end. She made sure she had the key to that door in hand and pulled the tree the remaining distance, then collapsed against the cell's door, knocking as she did so and asking, "Anyone home?"

"Well you know they say home is where the heart is and I can assure you my heart _definitely_ isn't in being incarcerated here."

With a smile, Taffyta stuck the key in the lock, turned it, and pushed the door open.

King Candy was already on his feet as she entered his cell—he usually was, it was obvious how bored he was here, Vanellope gave him nothing to do because she said she didn't trust him and that he might use _anything _to try to escape. Whenever Taffyta pointed out that there'd been a time that Vanellope had been willing to let King Candy leave _Sugar Rush _altogether, Vanellope always shrugged and said, "Yeah, well, that was before the rest of the arcade found out he was here."

So—whatever. Taffyta went to see him and kept hoping that someday Vanellope would see what _she _saw, that King Candy wasn't a terrible monster. Actually at the moment she had to convince pretty much _everyone _of that, and sometimes it got overwhelming and—

_No. Stop_. There wasn't any point in thinking about this now. It was _Christmas_, well Christmas Eve technically, and she was here now with someone she cared about very much, and the happiness in his eyes was clear whenever he saw her, even if he never said it.

"Hi!" she said brightly. "Guess what, I brought you something!"

"Besides your charming company?" King Candy asked, his eyebrow arched and his tone teasing.

She stuck her tongue out, then asked, "Can you hold the door open for me? And close your eyes!"

"I don't think I'm allowed to hold the door of my own cell open," he remarked as he moved to grab it.

"Well," Taffyta said as she went back out into the corridor to pick up the tree again. "Don't escape. And I said to close your eyes!"

He chuckled and said, "Okay, okay—closed."

Before she dragged the tree past him, she checked to make sure he was telling the truth. His eyelids were shut tightly, so she rushed to pull the tree the rest of the way into the cell, then prop it up in the corner, setting the bags of decorations down next to it. "Ta-da!" she said, throwing her arms open.

His eyes opened and he furrowed his brow, then said, "It's…"

"A Christmas tree!" Taffyta said happily. "A real one too, see?" She reached out and wiggled a branch, which made needles rain down. "Whoops, it…it kind of like, sheds."

King Candy was just staring at the tree in a way that almost made her nervous that he didn't like it. Except now that he wasn't hiding anything, she'd begun to find that she could read him, just a little. But just a little _more_, every day. So she waited, and finally his gaze shifted to her, and he said, "Where did you get it?"

"The game that just got plugged in," she said proudly. "It's a snowboarding game or something so there's _lots_ of real pine trees growing all over—look, I even brought decorations, and…you do like it, right?"

A grin finally split his face. "Of _course_ I like it." Binary flickered up him but he held his form and didn't glitch to become Turbo. "Are you going to stay and decorate it with me or are visiting hours shortened for the holidays?"

"Of course I'm staying," she replied, smiling happily.

Okay so maybe she hadn't been _totally _sure he liked it.

The two of them balanced the tree in the stand she'd brought and screwed it in, both of them tacitly deciding to ignore the fact that it was just _slightly _crooked. Then Taffyta picked up the bag of decorations, pulling a string of lights out first. "Candlehead said we should use candles instead of lights," she said as she untangled the licorice wire, "but I didn't think that was a very good idea…because Candlehead's candle-related ideas are always kind of dangerous to be honest, like I'm not sure she gets that fire's bad?"

King Candy chuckled and, going to work untangling the other end of the string of lights, said, "Please tell me you're not just realizing this _now_."

She smirked at him and they concentrated on straightening the string of lights, and when they'd finished with that, King Candy hopped onto his bed to begin wrapping it around the top of the tree, while Taffyta fed the string to him. "So how have you been?" she asked as he moved lower, positioning them perfectly. Which was good, she wouldn't have to go back and adjust them the way she did when Candlehead or Rancis helped her decorate her own tree. She just—liked things to be a certain way, and that was something she'd always had in common with King Candy. The other racers teased her and said she was a perfectionist. Like that was a _bad _thing? But Taffyta always just smiled smugly and replied, "Guess that's why I get first place so often."

Glancing down at her, King Candy said, "Oh you know, the usual, wild _parties _every other night, long lines of well-wishers…the carolers came by the other night."

When Taffyta looked at him, an eyebrow arched, he chuckled—just a _little _bitterly—and said, "The glitch came to visit today. Said as a special Christmas dispensation, I can have some of the leftovers from Christmas dinner. So—hoo-hoo—merry Christmas to me."

Taffyta heard it, even if he was trying to hide it—he was _sad_, because he'd always liked Christmas, liked throwing a big party at the castle, with lights everywhere, stockings hung for all the racers over the grand rock candy fireplace, and a huge dinner that they all dressed up in their finest for, because it was fun to get to feel like royalty for the day.

Well, back in those days, Taffyta had always felt like royalty. King Candy's favorite, the _de facto_ princess, it had been like…inviting the others into a world that she got to be part of every day.

It wasn't like she'd fallen _that _far. Not as far as him. She was still one of the game's top racers and she was on the random roster most days. _He_ was in the fungeon most of the time, except when Vanellope was out and he was allowed to wander around select parts of the castle. Or if he was lucky, Vanellope let him out on supervised excursions—him, Taffyta, and usually an Oreo guard or two.

He _was_ lucky to have that, Taffyta knew. And she knew that deep down, _he _knew it too. This wasn't like the ten years after _TurboTime _had been unplugged, when he'd hidden in Game Central Station, all alone, nothing and no one for company except lines of code that he slowly learned to tap into. He'd begun, in the last few weeks, to tell her about that period of his life, just a little bit at a time, and randomly when they were talking about something else. Suddenly he'd inject into a conversation, "I figured out how to code a 64-bit avatar right after I siphoned off a whole keg of root beer from Tapper's." Stuff like that. She knew he'd never talked about it with anyone.

The fact that he talked about it with her touched her more than he'd ever know.

Now, though, he had company, even if he didn't care much for Sour Bill's, or Wynchel's or Duncan's. He appreciated hers, at least. He never said it, but she could tell.

"I'll save you some dessert, too," Taffyta said, smiling at him as he finished stringing the lights. "Vanellope said something about sugared plums and candied fruit slices cake." Both of which she knew were some of his favorites.

Digging into her bag of ornaments, he glanced at her as he hung the first one and asked, "What day _is _it anyway? They sort of, you know…run together down here." This admission looked like it pained him, and her chest ached for him. Intellectually she knew—he deserved this. He was a game-jumping usurper and he was lucky that he had a home here, even if it _was _in the fungeon.

Didn't matter though, he meant everything in the world to her and she hated seeing him in pain, even though he did his best not to show it. And she could tell that something simple like not knowing what day it was hurt him. He'd been the king, he'd _run _things, now he was a prisoner whose days were all the same.

"Christmas Eve," she replied, smiling at him and hanging ornaments herself. They were hers, from her house—she didn't have a Christmas tree this year, because she'd wanted him to have something bright and happy.

"Is it?" he asked. Taffyta nodded, and he placed a big, sparkly pink angel on a branch, which sagged under the weight. For a moment, she watched him fuss with it, positioning it so that a lower branch took some of the load.

"Maybe Vanellope will let you out for a little bit tomorrow," she said, trying to sound chipper about it.

King Candy just snorted.

Hanging another ornament, Taffyta said, "Well, I'll ask her anyway." One Christmas, after everyone else had left his annual party, she'd stayed, and the two of them had eaten way too much dessert before ending up in a snowball fight outside, which she'd lost miserably. Her aim, as King Candy always took delight in reminding her, was awful. But then when she'd been about to become too wet and miserable, he'd called a truce, ushered her inside, and sat her down in front of the smaller fireplace in the library, a blanket wrapped around her and a mug of steaming hot chocolate in her hands, and—

And that was one of the many reasons that she hated seeing him sad, despite the fact that he was a, well, game-jumping usurper.

The bag of ornaments was almost empty and the two of them divided up the last few decorations. And then only the star was left, and she handed it to him with a small smile. "It's your Christmas tree," she said.

"I recognize this, though," he said, turning it over in his hands. Raising an eyebrow at her, he said, "These are yours, aren't they?" When she nodded, he asked, "Why are you giving me _your _Christmas decorations?" He hesitated, glanced at the mostly-decorated tree, and then added, "Why did you go through all this trouble at all?"

Taffyta pulled out a battery pack that Sergeant Calhoun had given her so she could plug in the lights. "Because, I figured…you were the one that brought a Christmas tree to _Sugar Rush _in the first place, so I wanted to bring a Christmas tree to you. And…" She shrugged, then smiled. "You're my friend."

For a long moment, he just stared at the star, pink and glittery like most of what she owned. Then he looked at her and met her eyes. "You…" But he trailed off, shook his head, and just said, "I wish I had a present for you."

"It's okay," she said. Because the fact was that he gave her a present every day, and that was the fact that he was trying to change, even though some days it was hard and some he even went backward and she'd seen him in the bitterest, foulest of moods, nothing like the King Candy she'd known for fifteen years, glitching back and forth and in an angry rage—the Turbo who'd taken out two games, the Turbo who'd hidden in Game Central Station and sunk into bitterness. But those days were getting less frequent, and she could see when he fought them back, when he understood and accepted why he had to live the way he did.

"You can get me something once you get out of here," she added with a smirk, in case any of those thoughts had shown on her face.

He chuckled, glanced down at the star one more time, and then stood on his bed to place it on top of the tree. When he climbed down, she offered the end of the string of lights and the battery pack to him, but he held up a hand and said, "You do the honors, my dear."

Smiling at him, she plugged the lights in, and the tree lit up, pink and white and sparkling, and it was _beautiful _and made her chest swell with something, and then when she looked at King Candy and saw the way he was staring at it, the way his chest was rising and falling with his breathing, just _slightly _heavier than normal, made that feeling in her chest burgeon even more.

"It's pretty," she said.

He put a hand on her shoulder, just briefly, and agreed, with an undercurrent of emotion to his voice, "It certainly is."

The two of them stood there in silence, the tree throwing off warm light and illuminating the cell, despite the game's yellow sun streaming through the window. The light from the tree was…different. Better. Happier, somehow, despite the fact that _Sugar Rush _was designed to be unrelentingly cheerful.

And finally, Taffyta turned to him and said, "Actually, if…if you don't mind, I thought I'd…well, spend the night here, and then that way, you…"

He was looking at her now, his brown eyes reflecting the light from the tree, and she finished, "…that way you don't have to be alone on Christmas. I know it's not much of a present but I thought—"

"Taffyta," he interrupted her. She met his eyes. "Taff," he added softly, and she blinked at the nickname, at the suggestion behind it, that they were equals now in a way they hadn't ever been before. His fingers curled and he flickered with binary, Turbo's glowing eyes visible for just a second before he locked his appearance back into place as King Candy. "That's a perfectly…perfectly nice present," he finally said. She almost thought he was going to go on, argue that she didn't have to—she was sure she saw the sentiment in his eyes, but then it cleared, and he just looked happy. "And…" he added, "I'd like that."

She smiled at him—at her mentor, her teacher, her _friend _who was trying to be a better person for her, and then she reached out to hold his hand. "Merry Christmas, King Candy."

His fingers tightened around hers. "You too, Taffyta."


End file.
